“If we are to have an awareness of God, then we must have attunement with God – attunement, awareness, conviction. If individual attunement with infinity was more vivid and real than attunement with the finite, the awareness of the eternal would outshine the awareness of this changing scene, and conviction under the power of God would dwarf into nothingness the convictions that men have concerning the powers of evil.–Uranda, 6/16/47

Meditation and Thinking

(edited/condensed)

Martin Cecil, September 4, 1963

The world has been in the self-active, or fallen, state for millennia past. It has become more or less set in the patterns of self-activity. Human beings everywhere have contributed to the maintenance of this state and there are those who think to take advantage of it. Human beings everywhere seek to do so in a variety of small ways, but there are those who operate on a larger scale in extending control over the lives of many people….we certainly have a keen awareness of the extent to which human beings everywhere are governed by fear. The fear is not always obvious, or on the surface, but we do not have to look very far to find that it is present. It is customary, then, for mankind as a whole to be very thoroughly indoctrinated in a pattern of subjection to fear. It is a habit and is conceived to be normal. As long as fear governs human lives those who operate on the basis of “black magic” may continue to control in the world….You may observe very easily that on the grand scale fear is constantly being utilized to whip human emotions….It is important for someone that we should all be afraid of each other, so that we may be governed by fear, so that as many people as possible never have the opportunity to let the feeling realm be cleared of subjection to fear. If things begin to calm down too much something is engendered somewhere to inject an apparently good reason for more fear. It all seems so very logical and reasonable that human beings should be afraid. There are so many things of which to be afraid.

It is not of course on the grand scale alone that we see this manipulation, but we find the little fears in individual human lives: fears with respect to family patterns, fears of parents for their children, fear of losing one’s job, fear of going broke, fear of losing what the individual thinks to possess. Fear, fear, fear. We could list fears for the rest of the day and still not cover the total. And so, black magic-control by human beings over others for the achievement of selfish, self-centered purposes. Sometimes these purposes are disguised somewhat and they are supposed to be for the good of the people. It is assumed that human beings are incapable of letting their lives be governed constructively without some wise human being to do it for them…. Most people do not much like to think; it is too painful a process for many, so it is turned over to someone else. It is expected that someone else will do our thinking for us. The provision has been made to learn what it means to begin to think under the dominion of the spirit of God instead of under the whip of fear. Under the whip of fear thinking may seem rather a painful process, because things are so terrible, or seem to be. However, coming under the control of the dominion of God the vision changes, we begin to see things in a different light, and tentatively at least, it may be recognized that thinking could be a rather pleasurable process….To develop a theme in one’s own consciousness, following it through, may be, if it is done correctly, very exciting, very much filled with adventure. We have the ability to behold the unfoldment of the divine presentation from within ourselves; to both participate in and observe the results.

In this increasingly automated world, human beings feel more and more futile and more and more frustrated, because a machine does everything. And if we carry it to the ultimate conclusion, we will not need any human beings anymore; the machines will do it all. But then what will be the purpose of it? One might well ask what is the purpose of it now? It seems very marvelous to human beings that machines should be able to do so much, and human beings are rather self-satisfied and proud of what they have done in inventing these machines and putting them together. But it produces problems, doesn’t it? And there is a very keen awareness now of the problems which are coming by reason of automation. What is the point of it? So that human beings do not have to do anything. They have more leisure. When the machines do it all, then we will all have leisure all the time I suppose, and we will all be in a terrible state of confusion and frustration and misery, because happiness is experienced through creative work. And if we palm off our work onto a machine, or onto someone else, so that we do not have to do anything, we become useless, and there is no more unhappy state than the useless state. One of the reasons why so many people are unhappy is just simply that: they feel that they are useless, nobody needs them, nobody wants them…. It is not avery beautiful state. And if we look at it we only look at it to see what occurs when human beings do not think, when they function on the wrong basis, when they are not allowing the divine control to work, the control of truth to work in their thinking processes. Consequently their thinking processes go off on tangents and there is the production of that which is ultimately completely destructive.

We do not really need all these machines. Now I am not suggesting that we should get out our sledgehammers and go around smashing them up. That would not help, because it is not the machines’ fault; it is the human beings who make them–and here is where the change is needed. It would not help much if we went around with a sledgehammer smashing up human beings! But obviously there is a need for change in this regard, the change to a true process of thinking. Human thinking in the self-active state has no basic control pattern; it has no true direction. It begins to follow out on all these apparently interesting avenues of thought and produces all these monstrous things in consequence, because there is no real or adequate control to direct the thinking in a manner that would permit the true design to appear. It is completely uncontrolled in this sense. There may seem to be control from the standpoint of the individual who is following out a particular line of thought in the human sense, but there is no sense to the particular line of thought he is following out. There is no control in relationship to that. Why is he following out that line of thought? What is the purpose of it? Human beings do not have an understanding of true purpose. Only that which is higher than man is understands true purpose; therefore the control of thinking must stem from that which is higher than man is, and man must be willing to accept that control. And the control operates through what we call truth.

We have begun to establish within the scope of our own consciousness various starting points with respect to truth, something which can allow us to begin to develop a true pattern of thinking. But we need to do it, we need to experience it. And perhaps, to start with, the machinery may be a little rusty and consequently squeak and groan somewhat, and it may seem that not too much is being accomplished. But after a while, if we keep it oiled with the oil of love, we will begin to find the machinery moving on the right basis, and then it becomes an increasing delight to begin to observe and share the bringing forth of that which is divine in the realm of thought. The realm of thought precedes the realm of words and the realm of action. Unfortunately, in the human state it very often doesn’t. The individual speaks first and thinks afterwards, and even when he thinks afterwards he is probably not thinking. All he is doing is regretting what he said: “Oh if I’d only known, if I’d only thought,” but he didn’t. And for the most part he is not interested in learning. There is continued involvement in this futile and frustrating pattern of emptiness.

It is important that we should on occasion be alone. Now we can be alone, as I am sure that all of you have experienced, in the midst of a crowd. It does not necessarily mean that we have to go off into the mountains and sit under a tree by ourselves, although perhaps this may be all right on occasion if there is a true centering and the object is to do a little thinking, true thinking—not going around and around in circles, which is worry: but letting something unfold, something new take form. And it takes application, it takes practice. There are those who have imagined that the world could be saved if we all spent several hours a day in what they called meditation. Well what is usually thought of as meditation does not achieve anything very much—the individual trying to blank his mind so that the spirit of God can tell him something. But that is not the way it works. If there is to be divine thinking, if God is to make use of the machinery of our minds, the machinery of our minds must be operating. If our minds are sitting still, doing nothing, they are not operating.

There is a certain pattern of stillness required, in the sense that one is not responding to all the external stimuli which impinges upon us as we begin to move into a pattern of thinking. Perhaps you have had experience along those lines. You start; you take a starting point and you begin to move, and something strikes you from some other direction and away you go, with your mind over there, and you have forgotten what it was you started with. Or it is too hot or too cold or there is too much noise, or something to distract, so that there is turmoil, a state of turmoil. It is important that one should reach a point where there is stillness because one is not being distracted by all these things, because there is centering in God with respect to that which is the point from which you are proceeding in meditation. But the mind moves. The mind must move. The mind cannot just sit there. It is going to take a little practice to get the mind limbered up, to get it ready to go to work in meditation…. It will not just happen. It requires application, so that we may begin to let the machinery be oiled up properly, to get it into shape for divine use.

Today we have had the opportunity of meditating on meditation, of thinking about thinking. Now, of course, we have only had the opportunity just to touch the surface of the subject because there is a little bit of rust in the machinery yet. If there is too much creaking and groaning in the machinery, we cannot hear what is going on, we cannot tell what is unfolding. But when something really begins to move, and we have the equipment to let it move, it is a most wonderful experience. And each one has a very specific responsibility in this sense of providing a focus for something and of providing the essences of something…. It is as the essences are differentiated through the people on earth, the divine essences, that they begin to become comprehensible to everyone. As long as they remain just essences they may be very pleasing perhaps to some, they may be sweetly scented, shall we say, but mean precious little. It is only as these essences begin to be differentiated through those who will participate in the process that they become comprehensible: first of all, comprehensible to the individual through whom they are being differentiated, and then, because they have been differentiated, it begins to become comprehensible to others.